We have been hearing about Tesla’s Robotaxi concept for several years, but it seems like we may finally be getting close to this vehicle becoming a reality. Here is everything we know about the Robotaxi.
Official Reveal
Yesterday, Musk officially announced on X that Tesla would unveil the Tesla Robotaxi on August 8th, 2024. Tesla last unveiled a new vehicle back in November 2019 when they showed off the Cybertruck for the first time. Before that, they unveiled the Roadster 2.0 and the Tesla Semi at the same event in 2017, so these certainly special times that only come across once every few years.
While it's always possible that Tesla may have to move the Robotaxi's unveil date, it's exciting to think that Tesla may be just four months from unveiling this next-gen vehicle.
Robotaxi and Next-gen Vehicle
Another piece of information came out about the Robotaxi yesterday when Musk reply to the post by Sawyer Merritt. Sawyer posted that Tesla's upcoming "$25k" vehicle and the Robotaxi would not only be based on the same platform, but that the Robotaxi would essentially be the same vehicle without a steering wheel. Musk replied to the post with a simple "looking" emoji.
While it's not surprising that two of Tesla's smaller upcoming vehicles are going to be built on the same platform, it's a little more interesting that Musk chose to reply with that emoji when the post talks about the Robotaxi being the "Model 2" without a steering wheel. This leads to the possibility of Tesla not only showing off the Robotaxi at the August 8th event, but also it's upcoming next-gen car.
Production Date
Back during Tesla's Q1 2022 earnings call, Musk talked a little about the timeline for Tesla's Robotaxi, stating that they plan to announce the vehicle in 2023 and begin mass production in 2024.
Given that Tesla was originally aiming for a 2023 unveil, a late 2024 date appears realistic. However, now it appears that the Robotaxi and the next-gen vehicle will share a lot in common, meaning that a production date for the Robotaxi can be similar to the next-gen vehicle, which is currently slated to begin in "late 2025".
The difficulty in releasing an autonomous taxi, as the Robotaxi is meant to be, is the self-driving aspect. While Tesla has made great strides with FSD v12, the first version to come out of "beta," it's still a level-2 system that requires active driver supervision. A fully autonomous vehicle is still a big leap from where Tesla's FSD is right now, but as we saw with the jump from FSD v11 to v12, a lot can change in the next 18 to 24 months.
While we expect Tesla to remain focused on bringing its cheaper, next-gen vehicle to market ahead of potential competitors, the Robotaxi's production date can continue to shift in line with Tesla's progress on FSD.
The history of Tesla’s Robotaxi starts with CEO Elon Musk's Master Plan Part Deux, published in 2016.
At the time the concept was touted as normal Teslas with full self-driving (FSD) capability.
Once Tesla achieved Full Self-Driving, they would create a “Tesla Network” taxi service that would make use of both Tesla-owned vehicles and customer cars that would be hired out when not in use.
Once we get to a world of "robotaxis," it makes sense to continue evolving the interior of the vehicle to suit customer needs such as adding face-to-face seating, big sliding doors providing easy access, 4-wheel steering, easier cleaning, etc.
Tesla could even create a variety of Robotaxis that help meet specific needs. For example, Tesla could offer a vehicle that is better suited for resting, which could let you sleep on the way to your destination.
Another vehicle could be similar to a home office, offering multiple monitors and accessories that let you begin working as soon as you step inside the vehicle. Features such as these could bring huge quality of life improvements for some; giving people an hour or more back in their day.
The variety of Robotaxis doesn't need to end there. There could be other vehicles that are made specifically for entertainment such as watching a movie, or others that allow you to relax and converse with friends, much like you'd expect in a limousine.
Lowest Cost Per Mile
During Tesla's Q1 2022 financial results call, Musk stated that its robotaxi would be focused on cost per mile, and would be highly optimized for autonomy - essentially confirming that it will not include a steering wheel.
“There are a number of other innovations around it that I think are quite exciting, but it is fundamentally optimized to achieve the lowest fully considered cost per mile or km when counting everything”, he said.
During the call, Tesla acknowledged that its vehicles are largely inaccessible for many people given their high cost and he sees the introduction of Robotaxis as a way of providing customers with “by far the lowest cost-per-mile of transport that they’ve ever experienced. The CEO believes that the vehicle is going to result in a cost per mile cheaper than a subsidized bus ticket. If Tesla can achieve this, it could drastically change the entire automotive industry and redefine car ownership. Is Tesla's future still in selling vehicles or providing a robotaxi service?
FSD Sensor Suite
Tesla hasn't revealed anything about the sensor suite that they're considering for the robotaxi, but given all of their work in vision and progress in FSD, it's expected to be the same or similar to what is available today, potentially with additional cameras or faster processing.
However, back in 2022, Musk gave this warning: “With respect to full self-driving, of any technology development I’ve been involved in, I’ve never really seen more false dawns or where it seems like we’re going to break through, but we don’t, as I’ve seen in full self-driving,” said Musk. “And ultimately what it comes down to is that to sell full self-driving, you actually have to solve real-world artificial intelligence, which nobody has solved. The whole road system is made for biological neural nets and eyes. And so actually, when you think about it, in order to solve driving, we have to solve neural nets and cameras to a degree of capability that is on par with, or really exceeds humans. And I think we will achieve that this year.”
With the Robotaxi unveil now approaching, it may not be long before we find out more details about Tesla's plan for the future and its truly autonomous vehicles.
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Last night on X, Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla will be expanding the service area for its Robotaxi Network pilot in Austin, Texas, this coming weekend. This is the first official confirmation we’ve had of a date for expansion, following news that Tesla is hiring more Vehicle Operators and plans to expand the Robotaxi supervisor ratio in the coming months.
This is a sign of Tesla’s confidence in the Robotaxi pilot program and its current FSD builds.
Expanding to a larger service area in Austin this weekend
The announcement confirms the sights we’ve been seeing of Tesla’s engineering validation vehicles focusing on areas outside the initial geofence. This public test shows that Tesla was likely finalizing FSD builds and gathering the necessary safety data to push the boundaries for the service, and this upcoming weekend’s expansion will be the first direct result of that work.
Given the increase in service zone size, this expansion will also likely include the addition of more vehicles to the initial Robotaxi fleet of approximately 20 vehicles. We expect the new number to be anywhere from 30-50 vehicles serving both the original and new areas, combined, based on Tesla’s previously expected rollout schedule.
What to Expect
While the exact new boundaries haven’t been released, it is almost certain that the expansion will include the South Congress Bridge and the downtown core areas of Austin. Expanding into a dense urban zone will include more complex intersections, heavy pedestrian traffic, and a unique road layout. That is a major vote of confidence for Robotaxi FSD’s capabilities.
The expansion will also help Tesla to close the service area gap with Waymo, its primary autonomous competitor in the city. This quick expansion is a sign of just how scalable Tesla’s vision-only approach is, versus Waymo’s arduous and drawn-out mapping processes.
We also expect that with this first service zone expansion, Tesla will continue to invite more people to its Robotaxi Network in the coming weeks. Tesla has already sent out various rounds of events, as they’ll need users to continue using the system. If you’re waiting for an invite, it may be time to start getting excited about the next rollout.
We’ve been hearing about Grok, xAI’s AI assistant, coming to Teslas for almost two years now, but this is finally coming to fruition soon. XAI unveiled Grok 4 last night, but the entire stream didn’t mention Teslas. However, Musk later posted on X that Grok will arrive in Tesla vehicles “by next week.”
Between leaks and the Grok mobile app, there’s a lot we already know about Grok, but there are a few missing pieces that will be cleared when it finally arrives.
Next Week, or Next Next Week?
Musk said that Grok would arrive by next week, meaning it could arrive before then. However, based on how Musk typically states Tesla timelines, there are a few things to consider that give us a better idea of what to expect.
First, whenever Musk posts a Tesla timeline on X, he typically means when it’ll be released to employees and not a public release. Expect this to be the same thing.
Tesla releases software updates to employees first for a final round of testing before starting a gradual release to the public. Sometimes issues are found, especially with FSD updates, and the update needs some fixes before being released publicly. So expect employees to get it by next week, and not necessarily normal Tesla owners.
The second part to this is that Tesla always rolls out their updates gradually, so when it does finally arrive, it’ll only be available on a small percentage of vehicles. Tesla will gradually monitor issues and logs, continuing the rollout as long as no major issues are found.
Which Software Update?
The entire Grok UI was already included in software update 2025.20, but it’s not exposed to users. Typically, a new feature like Grok requires a vehicle update to be added; however, this version may be different, as it’s locked behind a server-side configuration.
Tesla likely has the ability to enable it for all supported vehicles with a simple switch. However, we feel more confident in it being rolled out in Tesla’s next major update, which is likely to be 2025.24 or 2025.26. Rolling it out in a new update aligns with how Tesla has historically introduced features.
If they turned it on for everyone at the same time, they could be exposing everyone to potential new issues, rather than only a smaller segment of users. While Grok is now well-tested through X and the Grok app, there are several elements that are new in Teslas, likely including the ability to control various vehicle functions, such as opening the glove box or other capabilities that voice commands are currently capable of. The Grok interface in the vehicle is also entirely new and may have some bugs associated with it that will need to be addressed, especially if they impact other features.
What we can likely expect is that Tesla will make some tweaks or bug fixes to Grok with the next major update that weren’t included in update 2025.20 and they’ll begin rolling it out to employees and then customers.
Supported Vehicles
Speaking of supported vehicles, thanks to the behind-the-scenes look at Grok, we have a good idea of the vehicles that will be supported. Tesla uses the same code for most of its vehicles, but then it’s compiled for each type of hardware. However, only the needed code is compiled for each vehicle, meaning that some pieces are left out entirely. Unfortunately, Grok code is not included in Intel software builds, meaning that only AMD Ryzen-based vehicles will receive Grok, at least initially.
We’ve seen Tesla go back and add support for Intel vehicles after it initially released a feature for AMD vehicles. We saw this with the weather radar overlay and several other features in the past. However, Tesla has been developing code with web technologies lately. While this makes development easier, it just doesn’t perform as well on the slower Intel hardware, causing it to be left out. We saw this with the new Dashcam Viewer, which is entirely coded in HTML, CSS, and JS. The new viewer was available on HW3 and HW4 vehicles, but only those that included the Ryzen infotainment processor.
Grok is coming to Tesla vehicles very soon. Next week at the latest.
There’s a lot we’re expecting in Grok for Teslas. Some people will absolutely love it because it’ll completely transform their drives from a singular experience to feeling like they have a knowledgeable person sitting right next to them. Given the recent controversies surrounding Grok, some people will strongly oppose it. Hopefully, Tesla makes it easy for those users to turn off Grok.
The voice command system, which is activated through the steering wheel, is expected to be replaced with Grok. This will mean that you’ll be able to talk to your vehicle much more naturally, rather than having to remember specific syntax and commands, which should be a major improvement.
We’re personally looking forward to just being able to ask questions that pop into our heads while driving, such as What’s the date of Tesla’s next event, or How many miles away is Mars? Knowledge will be available at the touch of a finger and more accessible than ever.
Grok is also expected to support continuous conversations, meaning that you’ll be able to hold a conversation with it and go back and forth about a certain topic. While there are hints of a wake word in the code, for now, it seems like you’ll press the steering wheel button once to activate it, and then again to turn it off.
For those excited about AI and Grok, this will be one of the biggest additions to Tesla’s software in years, possibly only rivaled by the Dashcam / Sentry Mode feature and FSD Beta.
It shouldn’t be long now before we all have a chance to try it out for ourselves.
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